Joy or gloom: SA football fans are used to this by now
SA’s chances The prospect of SA failing to qualify for yet another Africa Cup of Nations are hard to swallow for long-suffering Bafana Bafana fans. If, heaven forbid, Hugo Broos’s team’s hopes of qualification are buried beneath the artificial turf at the Samuel K Doe Stadium in Paynesville, Monrovia on Tuesday night, it would mean that a country with some of the best football infrastructure and facilities on the continent, not to mention arguably the top league in Africa, would have failed to qualify for the biggest sporting event in Africa for a third time in the past four editions.
This while much smaller countries such as Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea and Sierra Leone, among others with severely limited resources, all qualified for the 2021 Nations Cup in Cameroon.
The draw for the qualification groups does play a role in progressing, but the expansion of the competition to 24 teams for the 2019 tournament allowed the top two from each group to qualify. If anything, this should have made things a lot more comfortable for Bafana who, despite their woeful recent record, are somehow still respected in African football.
The team’s path to next year’s tournament in Ivory Coast was smoothed even further by Fifa’s suspension of Zimbabwe, reducing Bafana’s group to only three teams. A top-two finish in a group that includes powerful Morocco and a Liberia side ranked at 150 by Fifa seemed a formality. Alas, we managed to find a way to put ourselves in real danger of failing to qualify yet again!
There is no question about the natural footballing talent that abounds in this country. I refuse to believe that Tunisia, for example, has more talent than SA, yet the north African country is on the verge of booking its place at the Nations Cup finals for a recordextending 16th time running. They have also appeared at the World Cup four times (in 2002, 2006, 2018 and 2022) since Bafana last qualified for Fifa’s flagship tournament on the field of play in 2002.
It’s also instructive to compare SA’s floundering senior men’s national team with their flourishing Moroccan counterparts. While Bafana were held to a draw by unfancied Liberia at a relatively empty Orlando Stadium on Friday night, the Atlas Lions beat mighty Brazil in front of 65,000 passionate fans at the Ibn Batouta Stadium in the northern coastal city of Tangier 24 hours later. Walid Regragui’s team showed with their victory over the Selecao that their barrierbusting semifinal appearance at the World Cup in Qatar in December was no fluke. They are simply reaping the benefits of a good master plan to develop the game in their country and sit at football’s top table alongside the world’s best. Victories over top sides such as Portugal, Spain, Belgium and now Brazil confirm their rise, which has seen them moving to 11th in the latest Fifa rankings.
It’s not only Morocco’s national team that’s taking the world by storm. Their national women’s team has developed quickly into one of the best in Africa, finishing runner-up to Banyana played at Banyana’at last year s World last year’s Cup Women’s Africa Cup of Nations. Their women’s under-17 side and beat hosts India in the group stages. The north African kingdom is also a dominant force in African club football.
Wydad Casablanca have won the Champions League twice in five seasons (in 2018 and 2022) and finished runnerup in 2019 while between them Raja Casablanca (2018 and 2021) and RS Berkane (2020 and 2022) have lifted the Confederation Cup four times in the last five years.
Not to be left behind, FAR Rabat won the second edition of the Women’s Champions League when they trounced Mamelodi Sundowns Women 4-0 in the final in November.
These successes can all be attributed to a long-term strategy implemented in 2014 by both the Moroccan Football Federation and the government.
At the centre of the admired growth and development of Moroccan football is the famous Mohammed VI Football Complex.
Opened in 2010, the complex, housed on 29ha of ground close to Rabat international airport, was renovated at a cost of 630million Moroccan dirhams (nearly R1.2bn) in 2019, elevating it into a world-class facility.
In addition to its impressive sports facilities that include four football fields, three Astro-turf pitches, an indoor facility, a* beach football pitch, an Olympic-size swimming pool and two tennis courts, the complex includes accommodation for the various national teams when they are in camp.
If that’s not enough, it also houses a new-generation performance and sports medicine centre. Small wonder that former Bafana Bafana and Mamelodi Sundowns mentor Pitso Mosimane, who completed his Caf Pro Licence coaching course at the complex alongside his Atlas Lions counterpart Regragui and Senegal’s Aliou Cisse, was moved to remark that Morocco is at least 20 years ahead of other African countries in terms of football development.